


Little Hero

by AetherAria



Category: Megamind (2010)
Genre: Animals, Fluff, Gen, and metro man is only here for like two sentences, i gave Hero a tag because i love her and i expect she'll appear again later, is it still found family if its an animal?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 17:12:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18815353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AetherAria/pseuds/AetherAria
Summary: The feral cat population around Megamind's Lair is becoming a problem, and one cat in particular is determined to make a spectacular nuisance of herself.





	Little Hero

**Author's Note:**

> A VERY WONDERFUL anonymous person on tumblr prompted this at some point yesterday, and I just spewed a BUNCH of words. This is the cleaned up, reformatted version of that post. Hope you like it!

There is a rather large feral cat population in the area surrounding Evil Lair. There are big warehouses standing empty they can sneak into for shelter, rats to hunt, few humans to harangue them, and it’s close enough to the docks that they can occasionally assault the local population of water birds.

When Megamind starts to capture them to bring in to a vet to be looked over and spayed or neutered, he insists, _vehemently_ , that he’s only doing so because it will be a nuisance if the population grows out of control, that he doesn’t want to deal with the cats getting inside the Lair itself and risk them interfering with experiments or tangling with the brainbots (he’s already tweaked their code so there’s no chance the brainbots might accidentally hurt the cats, but he doesn’t mention that).

That really doesn’t explain the big chunk of change he donates each year to the cat rescue slash sanctuary in the city that his ferals tend to go to after he pulls them off the streets, or the renovation plans he contributes to the building, or that  _one cat_ -

There’s that one cat, of course.

An escape artist extraordinaire, despite the fact that the she’s completely blind, with big, cloudy eyes and a scruffy coat that might be tortoiseshell under all the dirt and grime. Megamind can’t even get her to the vet for  _weeks_  after he finds her creeping around in the belly of the Lair the first time, because she can disappear like a magician, she can hear him coming a mile away, and she is utterly terrified of people, alien or otherwise.

What follows is a campaign of mouse-hunt level shenanigans trying to Get That Damn Cat Out. Megamind invents some highly specialized, otherwise useless equipment to try to scoop her up - even goes so far as to dedicate a small idea cloud to the effort - but even when he manages to grab her, she has an uncanny ability to wriggle her way out of nearly anything, and he won’t risk hurting her to capture her so he winds up at a stalemate with the creature (Minion pretends not to laugh through this whole process, but he takes to calling the cat ‘the  _little_ hero’, as if she’s a new rival for Megamind to throw himself fruitlessly against, and as infuriating as that is Megamind can’t exactly call him wrong considering his miserable success rate with both of his foes). If nothing else, the inventions he created unsuccessfully for this one little beast are much more effective when he uses them on the less-skilled cats outside the lair, so he doesn’t feel that his efforts were completely wasted. He even patents the less crazy-looking inventions so other people will be able to make use of them.

Megamind eventually swallows his pride and asks Metro Man (the  _big_  hero, Minion helpfully chimes) for advice during a lull in a battle, because Wayne has like six cats (some of which may or may not have been former Megamind-rescues; the Scott family are equally generous donors to different animal nonprofits in the city and That One Sanctuary in particular), and he knows more about dealing with animals than Megamind does. He’s always being tapped by children to pull pets out of trees and storm drains, after all. Wayne laughs, but only a little, before he drops a bunch of tips on how to earn the trust of a suspicious cat.

Megamind scowls because he doesn’t want the cat to  _trust_  him, he just wants to get the cat  _out_ , but he begrudgingly takes the advice anyway because he’s just sick of getting run in circles by this little monster.

It’s a slow process, because cats require  _effort_ , especially ones that have been so obviously hurt by people before, but Megamind is  _nothing_  if not persistent. He keeps cat treats on him at all times in case he spots her, and he stops trying to chase her down. She creeps into his workshop and he stops what he’s doing. She freezes when she hears him, ears twitching, waiting for a reason to bolt, but he doesn’t make a move toward her. Wayne explained cat body language, but Megamind doesn’t know how much of it translates for a cat who can’t actually see. He crouches down, makes that  _ridiculous_  kissy noise Wayne had suggested (he has worries that Wayne is pranking him, but there’s no one to see him make a fool of himself here anyway), and waits.

Obviously it doesn’t work that first time, but she doesn’t run away yowling, at least. She stands, wary, for a few long minutes before she slinks back out of the room and disappears again.

Megamind picks a spot in his workshop (somewhere he’s bound to be most often, somewhere she can get used to his presence), and starts leaving out a bowl of water and a dish of food. She still flinches and bolts when he makes too much noise, when he comes anywhere close to her, but after a few days she starts to spend most of her time in there when she isn’t off disappearing, happily chowing down and smacking scraps of paper around the floor.

Megamind has a habit of talking to himself while he invents anyway, so he rolls his eyes at himself and begins to aim that monologue specifically at the cat while she’s in the room. She seems wary of the extra noise, but occasionally she settles into an attentive loaf with her ears perked his way as he chatters. He accidentally calls her  _little hero_  too, more than once, and he thoroughly blames Minion for getting the name stuck in his head instead of something more appropriate.

Eventually, she starts talking back, giving little chittering mrrrrps when he pauses between thoughts, though the first time she does so Megamind laughs hard enough to scare her from the room.

After a week or so he finds himself stuck on a project, and he collapses dramatically to sit on the floor beside his workbench, bemoaning his position to the little hero, grumbling and gesturing while she listens from across the room and banters back with her little whirring meows. She stands up from her loaf after a while, stretches her legs out in front of her with a squeaking noise, and pads a little closer.

She’s come near him once or twice before, edging close enough to sniff around near his boots and then darting away. This time, she creeps closer and sits, cleaning herself off for a few minutes nonchalantly while he talks through his dilemma. She creeps a little closer,  then closer again, eventually sniffing at the tip of his boot and- rubbing her cheek against the toe.

Megamind fumbles at his pocket, pulling out a handful of the treats that have been fumigating his pockets for weeks now, and he carefully, carefully holds one out. He can see the moment she smells it, the way her frame perks up, her nose in the air, and she comes closer, step by wary step until she can nudge her nose against his fingers and pull the treat from between them.

She ducks a few steps back, then, crunching furiously as if she hasn’t been as well fed as any other housecat for the last week or so, and Megamind holds out another treat and waits. She snags that one too, and this time she doesn’t bother backing away to devour it. When she noses around for the third treat he reaches out with his other hand first, and she presses her entire face against his palm, snuffling against his skin, and doesn’t pull away from his right hand after she grabs the treat from his left. 

He rubs his fingers against her ear (he’s mentally cataloging the treatments she will likely need when he brings her to the vet, eardrops and eyedrops and flea medication, her poor black-and-orange fur is matted on her back and sparse where she has scratched herself raw), and she makes a curious noise as she chomps enthusiastically on treats four and then five.

She steps onto his lap for treat six, and rubs her cheek against his knuckles, and then she starts up a rumbling, motorboat-loud purr as pets her ears and neck and shoulders properly. She doesn’t even seem to mind that he’s run out of treats.

Minion finds him still cross-legged with the little hero curled up tight on his lap hours later, and he grins wide and snaps a picture despite Megamind’s quiet but furious protests.

She doesn’t stop purring the entire way to the vet, doesn’t stop purring so long as Megamind keeps a hand on her. 

After the checkup and treatments are over and the appointment to have her spayed is set, when the vet asks Megamind (in disguise, of course, but Megamind suspects that the entire staff here knows who he is under the layer of hard light) if he wants her to hang on to the little cat and arrange for transport, if Megamind wants them to send this one over to the sanctuary like the others-

Hero purrs wildly in Megamind’s arms, and Megamind shakes his head.


End file.
